I picked and washed about 8 oz of Jill. The post wash and dry weight of Jill was just a hair over 5 oz. That’s not a whole lot of loss. I would have expected more loss due to grease for a merino. But this is a pristine fleece. I found very little vegetable matter in the fleece. A few stray bits, but nothing else. A wee bit of 2nd cuts, again not anything really noticeable.
I’m flicking the locks and spinning directly from the locks. After showing Judith last weekend what I’ve been doing, she immediately said that my Strauch Flicker was much too much for the delicate fleece. So, I pulled out the cat brush instead. Much easier on my hands too!
So, there you see it. Very basic. A cat brush and a drop spindle. (Don’t ask which spindle because I don’t know. I typically lose my tags as soon as I get fiber on the spindle, which means as soon as I get it in my hot little hands. They are meant to be used, n’est pas?) I can tell you that it’s very light. Less than 1/2 oz. (10 grams, perhaps?) What you see on the bobbin is my first spindle full. It has about 15 grams of singles on it. More than the weight of the spindle. But the spindle wasn’t even half full. But I will not be filling my spindle that much from now on. It really affected the grist of the single. I wasn’t able to draft as fine as I did at the beginning, when the spindle was still empty. The single had to be a bit fatter to support the weight of the spindle toward the end.
I want consistency more than I want to try and pack as much as possible on the spindle. After all, it’s all about the process, not speed nor efficiency.
Oh, I wound off the single twice. Once on the first storage bobbin, and then onto a second one.
Why? Judith suggested spinning from the tip (as it grows from the sheep, or as if you are spinning right off of the sheep), and plying from the butt end. If I only wound off once, then I would be plying from the same end that I spun from, the tip. Twice, I get the butt end out and ready to ply. Make sense? (And of course, we all do what Judith says, right?)
And one last photo for you because it tickles me.
This is the plastic zipper cover that came with the flannel sheet set I bought for the Point Bonita retreat last week. In it, the remainder of the washed locks that I have yet to flick. Two neat little walls of locks, tip to butt.
I don’t know why it pleases me, but it does. The locks were a bit messy after they came out of the wash and dryer, so I gently pulled them apart. Of course, at that point, I loathed to put them back higgledy-piggledy. And so, here we are.
Jill in a bag.